Brock, U of T research shows lying in children as young as two

It’s official: children as young as two years are capable of lying, and they actually do it.

But don’t panic. Lying at such a young age shows that they’re slightly ahead of the game in terms of their brain development.

This is according to groundbreaking research by Brock University psychologist Angela Evans, co-author of the study “Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children,” published this month in the journal Developmental Psychology.

Conducted by Evans and University of Toronto psychologist Kang Lee, the study is the first to directly examine verbal deception in two-year-olds.

“These findings help us understand the early development of verbal deception and demonstrate that children’s lie-telling can occur earlier than we thought when the necessary cognitive skills are in place,” Evans says.